


Object Lesson

by linman



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander plays with a spell.  Giles breaks him of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Object Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [The Carpenter and the Wood](http://www.livejournal.com/users/justhuman/17598.html) by [](http://justhuman.livejournal.com/profile)[**justhuman**](http://justhuman.livejournal.com/). Written with her permission.

It wasn't Xander's fault Giles left that book open. And if it ever came out—not that this was ever, _ever_ going to come out—Xander was going to insist that the thing was Giles's fault to begin with. Not that _Giles_ had planned it, either—just, if there was going to be any blame flying around, Xander was going to make sure some of it landed on him.

Because if a man's going to leave profusely illustrated spellbooks open to tempting incantations on the desk in his office, where anybody could just sneak right in to steal JellyBellys and see them, then really, what can you expect?

The witches in the illustration were grouped around a man, and from the looks of it they were trying to kill him by making him come to death. Some revenge, Xander thought. Xander could think of many worse deaths—had seen many worse deaths—and happies were hard to come by, so to speak. So he shrugged and undertook to follow the instructions with the nearest bit of wood—a stake from the arsenal in the book cage.

Post-incantation, the stake did not in the least respond to any of Xander's coaxing or caressing or chafing. "Aw, the spell's a dud," he groaned, slipped the stake in his pocket, grabbed a handful of jellybeans from Giles's secret stash, and made his escape just as he heard Giles's footsteps returning from the stacks.

And that was going to be the end of it.

Except then that night he wound up on an impromptu patrol with Willow and Buffy and Faith, and Willow picked his pocket for the stake, and whooooooa.

"Um, Will?" Xander said feebly.

Willow whirled, gripping the stake harder as she turned. Xander was glad it was dark; but there wasn't time for deep contemplation, because Willow shouted, "Behind you!" Xander managed just in time to duck as a vampire grabbed for him. "Quick, Will!" cried Buffy, stake hand out, and Willow tossed Xander's Mr. Pointy. It landed securely in the Slayer's competent grip.

And then it was a free-for-all in which Xander's stake was bandied between the girls in a crazed battle with four vampires. Willow and Xander ended up putting their backs to either side of a large headstone, fighting when they had to, until the dust had cleared.

Xander had fought very, very poorly.

When everything had settled and they all gathered to compare bruises, Willow said, "Xander—what happened to your pants?"

"Um," Xander said. "Fell in a puddle." He glanced at Faith, expecting this to get the snort from her it deserved, but she merely gave him a thoughtful look and started off, tapping the stake lightly against her lips. They all followed her out of the cemetery, Xander hoping the darkness would hide the half-agonized, half-blissed look contorting his face.

They walked toward their homes together, chatting; Buffy and Faith tossing the stake between them and taking turns showing off their holster skills. Willow laughed; Xander stifled his groans. In the end, Buffy wound up with the stake, and before Xander could request that she give it to him, Buffy bid them all a cheery goodnight and took off at a faster clip down Revello, twirling the stake from hand to hand. And Xander found out just how much Buffy liked to play with her stake while doing her homework. Xander, of course, got no homework done at all that evening: by the time Buffy put down the stake and went to bed, he was too worn out to do more than cast a wistful glance over at his backpack.

Xander spent a very sleepless night.

Next morning Xander slunk to school with his figurative tail between his legs. He hadn't done his homework, and what was more, Buffy had accidentally stepped on his stake while getting ready for school. The best part of waking up, Xander thought. _Not_.

He was going to have to figure out a way to end that spell. There was no other way around it. The happies weren't nearly enough to make up for the sheer hair-raising anxiety of having his youthful manhood pass in and out of careless hands instead of living in his pants where it belonged. Not to mention the sneaking tendril of sour conscience winding through his thoughts. No, it wasn't worth it.

Xander hurried into the library and glanced around. Good. No Giles in sight. He snuck quickly into the librarian's office and made a beeline for the desk.

The book was gone.

Xander stared at the desk in an empty horror. He had no idea what book that had been, or where to find it. And asking Giles for help was out of the question.

Frantically Xander started to paw through the papers in Giles's office, hoping the man hadn't actually put the book away.

"Xander?"

Damn.

Xander straightened and turned around with a shit-eating grin. "Oh! Hi, Giles!…I was just…looking for…" —he hung fire for a moment— "you."

"Isn't it a bit early in the morning to be snitching jellybeans?" Giles asked him dryly, pulling off his glasses and getting out his handkerchief.

"Oh! ah, yeah, yeah, I guess it is," Xander gabbled. "Well, I guess I'd better get to class. See ya." He ducked quickly around Giles, who paused amid polishing his right lens to watch him jet out the library doors. Xander didn't wait to see if Giles was going to say anything else.

All that day Xander spent trying to get his stake away from Buffy, who kept taking it out and playing with it in the back of her history class. In English he had almost succeeded in swiping it off her desk when Mrs. Robertson swooped down on him and gave him holy heck for not completing his essay. "I gave this class three extra days to finish this essay. You'd better have a very good excuse, young man." Xander gulped. "Well?"

_Y'see, Mrs. Robertson, Buffy was playing with my dick by magic all night and I couldn't concentrate_.

"No…." It came out of him in a little whimper.

"Well, stop fiddling around, Harris. I want that essay by Monday, no excuses."

Mrs. Robertson sailed off, and Xander turned, but Buffy had put the stake away out of his reach in her bag.

By the end of the day, Xander had almost made up his mind to give up trying to fight the inevitable. After all, there were some up-sides to this situation. It wasn't all bad. And that patrol last night, whoa.

The bell rang, and they clattered down the hall to the library to get down to the day's Scooby work.

"Xander," Willow said, "why didn't you do your essay last night?"

"I was…too tired," Xander said, brushing her off and getting a seat at the table.

As Giles went over the daily threat, Buffy pulled out his stake and began toying with it at the table. She interrupted at one point to say, "Y'know, this stake could use some sharpening."

"Buffy," Xander said sharply, "Giles was talking. Pay attention!"

"Yes," Giles said, frowning quizzically at Xander, "let us not go off on tangents at the moment." And he went on, otherwise unruffled.

The threat was dissected; the assignments parceled out; and everybody began to get up and leave: except Xander, who had been working very hard to keep his face straight while Buffy worked his stake over in her hands. She set it down on the table briefly, to rummage in her bag and make sure she had everything before heading home. It was Xander's only chance: he slipped his hand across the table surreptitiously…a foot away, inches away….

Casually, Giles's hand swept in and picked the stake up, just as Buffy got up with her bag. "I'll see you later, Giles," she said cheerfully. "Wish me luck with the slayage." Xander's eyes followed her desperately as she clacked out of the library, leaving him marooned with Giles, who was wandering around the table with the stake in his hands.

This was going to take very delicate handling. "Um…Giles?" Xander said tentatively.

Giles turned around, stroking the stake lightly between thumb and forefinger. "Yes?"

If Giles had any idea what it was he was doing—

Maybe Xander could get him sidetracked enough to put the stake down. "Um…you didn't give me an assignment. Are we going to…hit the books?"

"Didn't you hear what your assignment was?" Giles said lightly, now tracing the stake along his palm. "Perhaps your mind was…otherwise occupied."

"Uhh…yeah. So maybe we should—you know—go…um…back to the stacks and get some books to research in." Xander was working very hard to keep his voice and face normal, and his eyes trained nonchalantly on Giles's face.

"Oh," Giles said, "I think I'm finding out some very interesting things right…here." And his hand curled around the stake in a gesture of unmistakable familiarity.

There was suddenly more than one reason the blood was draining from Xander's face. He tried to speak but could only produce a strangled whisper of horror: "Giles—"

"Yes?" Giles was giving him a sweet little smile, and the motions of his hand were increasing in intensity. There was something to be said for being a penis owner for a long time—no, Xander wouldn't think of that. Xander would _never_ think about that.

"Please…." Xander croaked.

Giles's voice hardened, but kept its lightness. "Please, what, Xander?"

Despite his efforts a faint little wisp of a groan escaped Xander's throat. "Please—don't do this to me—"

"Oh, there are any number of things I can do to you," Giles said. "I haven't even got started—ah, ah, keep your distance," he added, as Xander made to lunge out of his chair. "I don't think you'd like to see me break this stake over my knee."

"You wouldn't—"

"Maybe not. But do you want to test it?" Giles's strokes on the stake's surface were becoming unbearable. "That's what the spell was for, originally, you know: to cause pain rather than pleasure. It's just that—" he made a wringing motion that caused Xander to swallow a cry and bend his face down nearly to the tabletop— "pain and pleasure tend to be so nearly allied."

"Giles—"

"On the whole," Giles said, redoubling his efforts, "I think it would be best for you to cancel this spell and never…think…of doing…such…a foolish—and not to mention, _wrong_—thing again." Giles punctuated his words with sharp, stinging slaps of the stake against his palm.

Xander couldn't stop the little mewling wail that was fighting to get out of his throat. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I'll cancel the spell—but you gotta tell me how—aaaaah!"

"Don't worry," Giles said calmly, "I'll tell you how. Now do I have your promise?"

And he caught hold of the stake hard at both ends, effectively leaving Xander suspended at the very edge of climax.

"Do I have your promise?" Giles said.

"You bastard," Xander gasped.

"Do I have your promise?" Giles's voice had never lost its light aridity.

"I promise—" Xander uttered.

"Good," Giles said.

Xander never did see what he did next: his eyes screwed shut, he came in a loud moan— "Nooooooooo—" and collapsed, gasping, against the table.

When he had judged that the blood had stopped thundering in Xander's ears, Giles said, "I'll go retrieve the book. I suppose you'll want to go clean up a bit. I'll be in my office when you're ready." And taking the stake with him, he disappeared into his office.

Alternately fuming and stifling little leftover moans, Xander limped his way down to the gym, to take the most thorough shower he'd ever had in his life. When he returned, dressed in his gym sweats and still clean and damp from head to foot, he found Giles at his desk, sedately sipping tea. The offending book lay open on the desk, the stake marking the place in the middle.

"Ah, Xander," Giles said, as if this situation were a common occurrence. "Sit down, please."

Xander sat, his face stony. He was getting more pissed by the minute. If Giles had anything other to say than telling him how to stop the spell, Xander was just going to walk out.

Except that when Giles straightened his glasses and looked Xander directly into the eye, Xander felt a lump in his throat that must have been his conscience. He swallowed.

"I wonder," Giles said, "if you realize what it is you've done."

"I—"

"Getting women to pleasure you by surreptitious means is the stuff fantasies are made of," Giles went on, "but surely you've recognized that in reality it is a form of violation. I thought you'd learned that lesson."

Xander's mouth dropped open. So that was what Giles—

"I wasn't— I didn't—"

Giles lowered his chin and gave Xander a very steely look indeed.

"I didn't," he insisted, angrily. "I was just trying to get some magical me-time, not make Buffy and the others—"

For the first time, a twinkle (albeit a stern one) showed in the librarian's eyes. "With a stake, Xander? Why on earth didn't you just use a broom handle?"

Of course that would have been the obvious thing to have done. Xander said, "Well, it didn't work on me, so I thought the spell was a dud. I didn't know it'd work on _everybody else_."

Giles really was laughing at him behind those glasses of his. "Magic does tend to have unintended consequences," he said mildly.

"Yeah well, I sure wasn't intending to get the mother of all hand-jobs from—" Xander jettisoned the end of that sentence post-haste and said, "I was going to undo the spell this morning, but you put the damn book away."

"It took you twelve hours to realize you should have researched the counterspell in addition to the spell?" Giles said.

Stupidity sat on Xander's brow.

Giles said: "Has it occurred to you what might have happened if Buffy had left that stake to dust in a vampire?"

Horror gonged through Xander's body. "Oh my God. Would it—"

Giles raised his eyebrows dryly. "Would you like to make the experiment?"

"No!" Xander said. "I'll undo the spell. Gimme the book."

Giles took up the book, with the stake nestled in the middle, and put it before him on the side table, pointing out the relevant passage. Xander struggled through it phonetically, then looked up. For answer Giles reached out and took up the stake in his hand.

Nothing. Xander wilted in his chair, daring to breathe.

"Well, that's over then," Giles said, giving a philosophical shrug and taking back the book. "You'd best get home and eat a champion's afterschool snack. You're researching with Willow later this evening." And as Xander stood up, Giles picked up the stake once more and held it out to him. "Perhaps you'd like to keep this as a souvenir of your adventures?"

Xander glared into the older man's upraised laughing eyes before finally snatching the stake out of Giles's hand. _Someday, you will pay_, his look said.

Giles gave a little cough of a laugh and took up his teacup for a sip.

"I hope you're happy," Xander said bitterly.

Giles spluttered on his tea and set down the cup abruptly. "Happy? _Happy_? I beg your pardon. You had an orgasm at my expense!" He peered at his palm thoughtfully. "And I think I've got a splinter."

"Good," Xander said. He turned to go, but rounded on Giles again with a weak comeback. "And I had an orgasm at my _own_ expense, thank you very much."

To his fury Giles bubbled into a laugh. He pulled his glasses off, sat back in his chair, eyes squinted shut, and giggled heartily.

He was still laughing when Xander stormed out of the library.

_Finis_


End file.
